‘New minority’ in Richmond fail in push for inclusion of English on signs

Retail signage along Westminster Highway in Richmond, BC, has a mixture of English and Chinese signs as well as Chinese-only signs, March, 18, 2013.

Photograph by: Richard Lam
, PNG

METRO VANCOUVER - A small but vocal group of Richmond seniors were despondent Monday after city council rejected their call for a bylaw quashing Chinese-only signage in a city where more than half the residents are of Chinese descent

“We are the new minority,” Marlene Esplen, who has lived in Richmond for more than 20 years, said outside city hall Monday. “A lot of people around here are too scared to talk about this issue.”

Ann Merdinyan and Kerry Starchuk, Esplen’s niece, presented a council committee with a 1,000-signature petition asking the city to create a bylaw forcing businesses to include English or French on their signs.

“We gave them a lot of information about what has been going on in the past 20 years and we feel excluded from a certain part of the city,” Merdinyan said. “Because we love Richmond and we love multiculturalism, we thought we might be able to persuade them to include us in a decision that would put English or French, and a heritage language, on the signs — because that includes everybody.”

Council voted to add the petition to city files, but every councillor — except Chak Kwong Au — voted against referring the matter to staff for further study.

Mayor Malcolm Brodie said a small group of residents have been expressing concerns about the lack of English on storefront signs, but the community as a whole is dealing with the issue and he doesn’t see a reason for bylaw officers to “go out and measure signs and measure lettering and do all those kinds of things.”

“They remember what Richmond was like in the past and they were pleased with it and would like to return to it,” Brodie said. “We welcome people from all over the world to come live in Richmond and to set up their businesses in Richmond.

“I just don’t think arbitrary rules and regulations are the way to address this kind of an issue.”

If a complaint about a business’s lack of English signage is made, bylaw officers remind the business owner that “they’re cutting out a very large portion of their market,” Brodie said.

“I see more Chinese on signs in the Cambie-No. 3 Road area,” he said. “But while we notice the Chinese, I believe if you added up the signage in Richmond, the vast majority is in English.

“With a population of half our people or more being of Chinese origin you can’t be surprised you’ll see some Chinese language.”

Merdinyan and Starchuk’s group wanted the city to adopt a signage policy similar to that of Aberdeen Centre. The policy, which covers all centre retailers, requires at least 70 per cent of signs to be English/French and the remaining 30 per cent a language of the retailer’s choice.

Henry Beh of the Richmond Chinese Community Society didn’t support the petition but said businesses, like at Aberdeen Centre, should embrace bilingual signs.

“If you have a restaurant, and don’t do an English sign then you lose your customers — that’s not smart,” he said.

Beh said he showed up to Monday’s meeting to try to calm tensions between Chinese-speaking business owners and those who signed the petition. He said his organization has signage in both languages because it wants “to respect the people.”

“I’d like to see harmony in the city of Richmond,” Beh said.

Merdinyan said her group had written federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who told them that although the federal government could not do anything, provincial or municipal governments have the power under the Constitution to enforce signage rules.

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